The Worst Idea In The History Of Revealed Literature

Oh! That Bible! You gotta love it. Not much on the comedy, but way up there on the drama, horror, pathos, sex, science fiction, action, and with a little poetry thrown in, for the cholesterol, as it were. My personal favorite Biblical story is the one where God sends a she-bear to kill some teenagers because they made fun of a bald holy man, that was some hipster shit right there.

Can we agree right now though, as fully grown boys and girls, that it was a supremely bad idea to include the Revelation of Saint John the Divine (aka: “of Patmos”) in the one-and-only, for-all-time, Holy-Word-Of-God Bible. All it does is muddy the waters and give weak minded people strange ideas, and these days there are television stations that will give these credulous morons cable time with big audiences.

Does this even happen in America? Where, I suppose, there is a slightly higher level of education in evidence among the viewers. Over here in South East Asia, the Junior Asia, the Developing-World-Asia, stations like “Discovery,” and “History,” love to feature quasi-scientific shows comparing geological and cosmological realities to Biblical “prophecies,” as interpreted by the afore mentioned credulous morons, many of whom have tenure at real universities, or at least the approval of large swaths of the public, guys like Jerry Jenkins of the “Left Behind” series, which may itself have overtaken the Bible in popularity before you read this.

Yesterday I watched a show, two hours no less, I have nothing better to do, called “The Seven Signs of the Apocalypse,” on our local History Channel, which featured weirdoes like Jenkins, alongside fully accredited scientists under the dreadful influence of religion, in full agreement that earthquakes and volcanoes are sure signs that “God retains power over the earth.”

Somehow it’s funny when Iranian clerics blandly proclaim that earthquakes in Iran are caused by the promiscuity of Iranian women (meaning that they wear jeans and push their head scarves back past their hairlines), but it’s deadly serious when American academics and celebrities say essentially the same thing.

Never in “The Seven Signs” was it acknowledged, or even suggested as a possibility, that this fear of natural phenomena remains today the same as it ever was, since the time before it gave rise to religion in the first place, our fear of the mystery of nature, our fear of our helplessness before the dreadful majesty of the natural world, our fear of our inevitable, natural deaths.

And facilitating this idiocy, again and as always, was Revelations, with its numerically based mumbo jumbo, its multi-headed and horned metaphoric monsters, and its veiled allusions to ancient Rome and worldly politics. Who do we have to thank for all of this? Wasn’t it the Council of Nicea? The Gospel of Saint Thomas (which is pretty good stuff) is out; Revelations is in. That was some real mischief, that.